nds," said Aunt Maria, in a hard voice.

Maria returned home a week from that day. She travelled alone from
Boston, and her father met her in New York. He looked strange to her.
He was jubilant, and yet the marks of anxiety were deep. He seemed
very glad to see Maria, and talked to her about her little sister in
an odd, hesitating way.

"Her name is Evelyn," said Harry.

Maria said nothing. She and her father were crossing the city to the
ferry in a cab.

"Don't you think that is a pretty name, dear?" asked Harry, with a
queer, apologetic wistfulness.

"No, father, I think it is a very silly name," replied Maria.

"Why, your mother and I thought it a very pretty name, dear."

"I always thought it was the silliest name in the world," said Maria,
firmly. However, she sat close to her father, and realized that it
was something to have him to herself without Her, while crossing the
city. "I don't know as I think Evelyn is such a very silly name,
father," she said, presently, just before they reached the ferry.

Harry bent down and kissed her. "Father's own little girl," he said.

Maria felt that she had been magnanimous, for she had in reality
never liked Evelyn, and would not have named a doll that.

"You will be a great deal happier with a little sister. It will turn
out for the best," said Harry, as the cab stopped. Harry always put a
colon of optimism to all his happenings of life.

The next morning, when Ida was arrayed in a silk negligee, and the
baby was washed and dressed, Maria was bidden to enter the room which
had been her mother's. The first thing which she noticed was a faint
perfume of violet-scented toilet-powder. Then she saw Ida leaning
back gracefully in a reclining-chair, with her hair carefully
dressed. The nurse held the baby: a squirming little bundle of soft,
embroidered flannel. The nurse was French, and she awed Maria, for
she spoke no English, and nobody except Ida could understand her. She
was elderly, small, and of a damaged blond type. Maria approached Ida
and kissed her. Ida looked at her, smiling. Then she asked if she had
had a pleasant summer. She told the nurse, in French, to show the
baby to her. Maria approached the nurse timidly. The flannel was
carefully laid aside, and the small, piteously inquiring and puzzled
face, the inquiry and the bewilderment expressed by a thousand
wrinkles, was exposed. Maria looked at it with a sort of shiver. The
nurse laid the flannel apart and